Deconstruction
by ncfan
Summary: -Papa D- So this is what grief feels like. Grief for a human.


**Characters**: Papa D, Sui-Oh, Carolyn (the incarnation before Monica), Vesca**  
Summary**: So this is what grief feels like. Grief for a human.**  
Author's Note**: Carolyn is the name I've given to the incarnation of the girl who met up with D's father (Monica having been the most recent). The first line and Carolyn's only line in the oneshot (also in italics), are taken from _Dynasty_; I thought that since the whole 'reincarnation' thing seems to involve repetition, I thought that certain lines might repeat themselves. Also, I thought it meant something, that Papa D (called 'Dee' here) seemed to feel grief over the reincarnated girl dying, given that he's shown no fondness for humanity otherwise.**  
Disclaimer**: I don't own _Pet Shop of Horrors_.

* * *

_If I knew she was to die so young… Then surely… I would have told her that I loved her…_

Even if she was a human.

-0-

He had thought her so annoying at first. Dee wasn't inclined to suffer humans gladly, and had it not been for Vesca's influence (that idiot was actually starting to _soften_ his attitudes a little bit; Dee honestly didn't know what was happening to him), he would have turned her away out of hand. Honestly, the child was absolutely ridiculous.

At any rate, Dee did not at first go out of his way to be kind to young Carolyn Robbins. Looking back, he was—in his own view—needlessly rude to her.

But she was ridiculous, he maintained stubbornly, even after knowing everything, because telling himself that was the only thing that could alleviate his own guilt afterwards. She was so obscenely ridiculous.

How could someone fall in love with someone after just seeing them once? _How_? Human and their peculiarities, their perversions. Love was just another of these things that they made into something ugly, something polluted.

Carolyn didn't have a clue what she was talking about; Dee couldn't stand it. The nerve of the girl, thinking she knew what love was. She was barely sixteen!

Then, Dee saw Sui-Oh standing in the corner of his shop behind Carolyn, smiling that familiar, unpleasant smile at him, and he realized that he didn't have a clue of what he was talking about either.

Not a single clue.

-0-

Carolyn was a slave to fate, as much as Dee was; he realized that now, and his almost visceral dislike of Sui-Oh only deepened. He knew Sui-Oh had no more choice in the matter than either himself or Carolyn, but did she have to be so _smug_ about it, as she told him the tale of a princess who met with the guillotine?

He supposed that this revelation, courtesy of the phoenix, was a large part of what had made him soften his attitude towards Carolyn. She could be pitied, and not scorned or hated.

"_I don't understand… love between people_."

Dee remembered well, that tentative, utterly _small_ voice the human girl had used when she admitted that, smiling a sort of rueful, shamed smile, and not looking at him anymore.

It was impossible to know why, but that made him sad.

There was only one thing he could possibly say.

"_Neither do I."_

Dee decided then that if he could live his life again, he would do so as a human. Maybe then, as a human, he could possibly decipher what love was and how it could be the creation and the ruin of so many, if he spent his whole life trying.

Maybe.

-0-

It was amazing how dark Albany, a city so light-polluted that it made stars erupt in front of Dee's eyes at all hours, could get at night, especially with no moon. Carolyn had gone running after Dee and Vesca after they got out of the university for the day, so they were walking her home.

Carolyn strayed into the street for just a moment.

A moment was all it took.

-0-

"Carolyn." His voice was choked; _why_ was it so choked, so soft?

Down on his knees, with the girl's crumpled body—_it looked so small, so _pitifully_ small_—balanced on his lap, Dee could feel blood soaking his cheongsam, and for once he didn't care. Dee balanced her head in one hand, nestling fingers among a head of fair curls. The car had sped away; it was possible the driver hadn't even noticed.

Vesca had made a run for a payphone down the street to call 911, but if Dee had had a sufficient voice he would have told him not to bother.

Her eyes, gray as smoke, fluttered open for just a moment, before they closed again.

"Never fails." Dee looked up, and Sui-Oh was hovering over him, wearing that same inscrutable, enigmatic, utterly hateful smile, just barely showing teeth—she had a taste for blood, as he recalled.

"What doesn't fail?" Dee's voice was sharp, even abrupt; he couldn't bring himself to be polite with her, not now.

Sui-Oh laughed. "No respect," she murmured softly. "Your father is much better about that, you know."

"You didn't come here to talk about my father. Now, Sui-Oh, what 'never fails'?"

"The soul of this girl dies on the eve of the new moon, at the age of sixteen and three months, every time she is reincarnated."

Dee had bowed his head before, staring again at Carolyn—if it hadn't been for all the blood, she could have just been sleeping—but now, he snapped his head back up to stare, wide-eyed, at Sui-Oh. "What?" he asked hoarsely.

The phoenix's glittering eyes narrowed. "Ah, yes. A pattern set by the princess's fall to the guillotine. The reincarnation of Princess Imelda dies at the age of sixteen every time she is reincarnated, though never by the same cause. And another thing that never fails, is that she always manages to meet up with one of your ancestors before the end."

Dee felt his blood run cold, as the pieces began to make sense. "I didn't know," he choked out, voice breaking for the first time in living memory since his father had taken his son from him. It didn't matter anymore that she was a human; it didn't matter that she was someone he shouldn't have given a damn about. She had died, he realized, because of him, and she had done nothing to deserve it. Dee had sent humans to their deaths before; he made no lie of pretending to feel sorrow over their deaths. But he had never watched the life fade out of an innocent's—or at least somewhat innocent; she _was_ a human after all—eyes. "If I had…"

"Yes." Sui-Oh went on as though she hadn't heard him. "She dies if she is rejected. Your father dismissed her out of hand. Quite coldly, I might add, even for him; so coldly, in fact, that I never had this particular conversation with him."

"Dee!" Vesca was running back towards him down the darkened street. "The ambulance will be here in a few minutes. They don't want us going anywhere." He couldn't see Sui-Oh, but that was not unusual.

Sui-Oh almost seemed bored now, though she was still smiling. "You did a little better, though not well enough to save her life." Dee felt his fists clench.

"I wonder… Will your son do any better? Or will he let her die, the same way you did?"

Fingernails were biting into skin. "Leave." Dee's voice was dangerously contained, dangerously controlled.

Though he didn't see it, Vesca took a step back, highly affronted. "What?"

It wasn't being directed at him. Sui-Oh only smiled, shook her head so her shimmering hair caught the light, and flew away.

So this was what it felt like, to feel grief for a human. To feel grief for one of the Accursed Ones, who devoured the world and left ash and dust and offal in their wakes. To feel grief for one so impure.

But to feel grief all the same.

Grief was a monster, Dee realized.

It was enough to make him want to make the whole world stop, so he wouldn't have to feel it anymore.

* * *

Well, what do you think? I hope it doesn't seem too OOC.


End file.
